Slashdot Mirror
IBM About To Buy Sun For $7 Billion
plasticsquirrel was one of several readers to send in the sharpening rumors that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, as we discussed last week. The pricetag is reportedly $7 billion. According to the NYTimes's sources, "People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. IBM's board has already approved the deal, they said." After the demise of SGI, one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix. If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix. And reader UnanimousCoward adds, "Sun only came into the consciousness of the unwashed masses with the company not being able to get E10K's out the door fast enough in the first bubble. We here will remember some pizza-box looking thing, establishing 32 MB of RAM as a standard, and when those masses were scratching their heads at slogans like 'The Network is the Computer.' Add your favorite Sun anecdote here."
I remember rockin' coffee machines in the break rooms of their education centers. It's no mystery their most successful product is named "Java".
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
IBM today announced the outsourcing of 90% of Sun employees. "This will save us a good chunk of the $7B we paid for them," said an IBM representative.
Meanwhile, in Washington, IBM was approved to receive $3B in taxpayer money from the Keep America Working fund.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
...when I should start going back to calling things "IBM-compatible."
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
You don't know IBM very well, then.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It has lost most of the characteristics people identify as Unix though.
The usable GUI? :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
wow that's one hot piece of real estate.... (sorry)
You can fool some of the people all of the time
OS X is a unix. It is commercial in that it's being sold and to a large market. I don't see the problem.
The difference being the market. One is a server market, the other is a cult.
Back in college in the 1980's I administered a cluster of Sun2's with 160MB rack mounted hard drives. You could define those days as when a "hard drive" would kill you if dropped on your head from a height of 3 feet.
How much would they be willing to pay for some other celestial body. Say for example... Uranus?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Alpha Centauri, followed by Betelgeuse.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Sure it does, 'Enterprise Solution' is an industrial grade solvent used for dissolving piles of money stuck to the floor of vaults. It's also available in 25ml bottles for removing embarrassingly large numbers on corporate bank account statements.
'Unix' machines need to start up with a cross shaped cursor, a horrible background color and two-color windows with a 3x3 grid of lines across them when resizing.
X11 is a separate download/install on Mac so it's not a realman's Unix.
No sig today...
If
The Computer is the Network
and
The Network is Down
then
It's Time to Take the Rest of the Day Off
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If we angle this right, we might be able to troll 4chan into protesting outside Apple Stores all over the country.
I'm willing to sell them the Moon for $1 Billion or Mars for $1.5 Billion
i wonder how much the moon will go for... i hope apple doesnt buy it, i like their stuff, but i'm sick of their logo and you know they'd laser it on there.
Apple sells smugness.
I get my smugness for free. I run NetBSD.
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
Sure it does, 'Enterprise Solution' is an industrial grade solvent used for dissolving piles of money stuck to the floor of vaults. It's also available in 25ml bottles for removing embarrassingly large numbers on corporate bank account statements.
It is? I thought a proper Enterprise Solution is what you get when you blend your IT infrastructure properly.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow